Nick Young

A coworker was at Oracle on Tuesday night to watch the Oklahoma City Thunder pound the Golden State Warriors into oblivion, and after Paul George put Zaza Pachulia on a poster midway through the third quarter, I asked him if there was anything he was seeing in person that I would have missed watching on TV. His response: “we suck.” The Dubs are mired in a slump that has them limping to the All-Star break barely ahead of the surging Houston Rockets. And the Thunder, sans two key contributors in Carmelo Anthony (who tweaked his ankle) and Andre Roberson (done for the year with a ruptured patella tendon), had their way with the Warriors, getting whatever they wanted offensively behind huge performances from Russell Westbrook and Paul George and capitalizing on a flood of Warriors’ turnovers to win 125-105. The Warriors are now 1-4 against the Rockets and Thunder, who look to be the Western Conference teams most suited to dethroning the defending champions.

The Golden State Warriors opened their homestand with a fairly ho-hum victory over the Kristaps Porzingis-less New York Knicks, in a game that saw the Knicks jump out to a robust early lead and put all of their starters in double figures before the Warriors eventually shook off the cobwebs and put the game to bed. The Warriors didn’t take their first lead until the third quarter, but from that point onwards it was all Dubs. Catapulting the team’s surge was Stephen Curry, who shrugged off a dismal first half shooting performance to finish with 32 points (on 9-19 shooting, including 8-15 from behind the arc), 6 rebounds, and 7 assists.

The Golden State Warriors have been one of the most dominant teams in the NBA over the last few seasons, but they have by no means been infallible. One of the guilty pleasures derived from following the Dubs, particularly this season, has been watching as they overcome adversity, often times of their own creation. In a contest that Steve Kerr rightly flagged as a potential trap game, the Warriors were decidedly “bipolar,” as Stephen Curry put it after the game, as they happily mixed sensational play with comically inept play. Eventually, the good (Jekyll) overpowered the bad (Hyde), and the Warriors dispatched the feisty Bulls 119-112, behind a vintage performance from the Splash Brothers (Klay Thompson scored 38 on 12-22 shooting, including 7-13 from beyond the arc, and Stephen Curry added 30 of his own on 10-18 shooting to accompany 9 boards, 4 assists, and 6 costly turnovers).

The Golden State Warriors have some of the loudest (and best) fans in the world coming to Oracle Arena for their home games, but this season the Dubs have actually been a better road team. Despite adverse injury circumstances, with Stephen Curry still nursing a sprained ankle, the Warriors shrugged off a stiff challenge from the frisky Milwaukee Bucks to prevail in a national TV thriller, heading into the weekend with a 108-94 victory.

All good things must come to an end, and the Golden State Warriors’ utter domination of the rival LA Clippers over the last three years came to an abrupt halt on Wednesday night, as the Clippers, sans Blake “Max Contract” Griffin, rode a 50 point night from Lou Williams, a hot shooting night from behind the arc, and a whopping 24 rebound advantage in the paint to stop a 12 game losing streak against the Dubs. The loss spoiled a milestone night for Kevin Durant, as his 40 points put him above 20,000 for his NBA career and catapulted him into 8th place on the NBA’s active career scoring chart.

The Philadelphia 76ers have been “trusting the process” for years now, part of a now-legendary rebuild strategy espoused by now-deposed GM Sam Hinkie in an effort to accrue talent the new-fashioned way: by losing as many games as possible to improve odds in the draft lottery, and keeping payroll down so that talent can get paid. Now, the payoff for those years of ultimate suckage is finally at hand, with a deliciously young and modern core (Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid, Markelle Fultz, Robert Covington, Dario Saric) and some veteran leaders (JJ Redick and our good friend James Michael McAdoo, among others). Meanwhile, on the opposite coast, the Golden State Warriors’ process has been to reload from the top, using their cachet as a franchise and as a free agent destination and their owners’ deep pockets to bring on board known talents (Andre Iguodala, Kevin Durant, David West, Nick Young, Omri Casspi) and hot draft commodities (Pat McCaw, Jordan Bell). In a juicy matchup between two teams in very different stages of their development curves, the Warriors took the Sixers’ best punch and barely flinched, riding yet another dominant second half to win 135-114.